A federal judge has ruled that the US government can only subpoena a list of
URLs from Google's index but will not get access to sample queries as they are
submitted by users.
The US government had initially demanded that Google
hand over billions of URLs and two months of queries. At a court hearing last
weak, the government watered down its request, asking for only 50,000 URLs and
5,000 search queries.
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Although the government did not indicate what it was looking to do with the
requested URLs, the court gave "the government the benefit of the doubt" in
granting the request, it said in a written ruling
(PDF
download).
On the matter of the requested queries however, the judge sided with Google
in claming that the subpoena would harm user confidence and claimed that there
is a "potential burden as to Google's loss of goodwill".
He also followed Google's assertion that such information should be
considered a trade secret.
"This is a clear victory for our users and for our company," Google associate
general counsel Nicole Wong wrote on the
Google
blog.
"We believe that if the government was permitted to require Google to hand
over search queries, that could have undermined confidence that our users have
in our ability to keep their information private."
She added that Google plans to fully comply with the judge's ruling.
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